My body’s at the day job, my mind is on the new netbook sitting at home waiting to be set up for the trip tomorrow, and that means it’s time to catch up with writing news! (Or, it means that I should have brought my netbook into the office, but no one here needs to see the amount of costume reference pictures I’ll be transferring onto it. (They’re for research, I swear! STOP LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT.)

RIP, little Fassbender Syndrome, Jr.; I shall never forget how many times I was able to drop you before you finally broke.

1. On the Mechanique front, Faren Miller had some lovely things to say about it in May’s issue of Locus. For the curious and pixel-minded, part of the article is also available online. [ETA: There are some minor spoilers, and also Little George, a young man, is pronouned as a young woman; it doesn't affect the review as a whole, but if you had read the book and were confused, no worries.]

(Fun fact: I did the Author Thing of signing stock in the Union Square Barnes and Noble. As a chronic introvert, I was a little unprepared to be smooth about it all, and so it ended up like every terrible 7th grade dance ever – “HI WOULD YOU LIKE TO DANCE WITH ME I MEAN IN A GROUP MAYBE OR YOU DON’T HAVE TO DANCE WITH ME I WAS ONLY ASKING NEVER MIND IT WAS A JOKE I’M MOVING TO ICELAND BYE” – but hey, signed stock!)

2. I have a story in the just-announced The New Adventures of John Carter of Mars, a John Joseph Adams YA anthology that takes you back to Barsoom (or, to Barsoom for the first time! Barsoom doesn’t judge.) The TOC is amazing, and I really enjoyed writing my story, “A Game of Mars,” which follows Deja Thoris and John Carter’s daughter as she goes AWOL from home to rescue her brother from the deadly living-chess game of Jetan.

3. I’ll also be appearing in Armored, which just got cover art and a partial list of contributors. “The Last Run of the Coppelia” is about backwater algae-harvesters, the slightly-dim AIs who love them, and the accidental incriminating evidence that makes them all assassination targets. Whoops!

4. And since Nora did it, I will, too: I’ll be in Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling’s After! Hop over to her journal for a partial list of contributors and a nice teaser for her story. My story is “The Segment,” about a boarding school that houses kids of all ages and takes the nightly news very, very seriously.

5. When I get home tonight, I’ll be packing my bags for the Steampunk World’s Fair! My reading is at 1pm Saturday, but I’ll be around most of Saturday and Sunday; if you’re inclined to say hi, please do! I have a tendency to think that when people tap me on the shoulder Something Gross is On My Face, but if you can get past that initial facial expression, we’re good! Also, if I tap YOU on the shoulder, it’s because I have a spiffy new camera and I want to take your picture; there is probably nothing on your face.

6. (So much for five things.) I am wonderful at knowing what I need to pack, how it will fit in my suitcase, and how to account for contingencies, until the day before departure, when I buy eight pairs of pants, fifteen shirts, and a jacket from a store, then get home and remembered that what I needed to buy was a pair of socks.

/Pokemon

This year at WisCon I participated on the Netbook Show and Tell panel as the plug-and-play representative. For those who know their programming, it was an informative panel. For those who are a little more, uh, Luddite, it was a hilarious panel; I’m pretty sure that at some point in the melee, someone recalibrated their warp drive for endothermic propulsion.

People were very generous about showing off their netbooks and going through the pros and cons. I’ve done a layperson’s roundup over at Tor.com..

Hopefully this is just the beginning of my WisCon recapping, but I went back to the day job this morning after letting work build up in my absence, and oh, that’s always fun! (More later, is what I’m saying. Because this place is wild today.)

Over at Tor.com, I talk about one of the great movies of our time: Hackers.

By all means, head over there to read the column, in which I tried to keep it together. Because below this cut, I just nerd out ridiculously.

Hackers: when cargo pants were king.

There is no good and bad. There is only fun and boring.
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Disclaimer: I don’t care about Valentine’s Day except that it gives me a chance to make a list post. I am the Switzerland of Valentine’s day. (Unless people ask me if I’m excited for my “name day,” and then I sigh, because seriously, that joke was old in fourth grade, it’s old now.)

- Michael Fassbender. You inexplicably turn me all caps, big guy. Can’t wait to see you in your disastrous Wuthering Heights next year.

- Star Fleet wallets. I am the bird! (God, did I ever leave the house as an adolescent? Don’t answer that.)

- Family and friends. Dear Mom, I love you so much. Sorry I’m not changing my name. Apologize to Grandma for me.

- Fassbender, my portable computer. It allows me to be rude in public whenever I want.

- My TV. It took away the dialogue track for this week’s Eleventh Hour. It was amazing. Graeme Revell, one of my favorite composers, gave me a little concert, and I got to see the worst arch-enemy arc in recent memory. See for yourself at Tor.com!

ETA: And I never have to watch another episode of Dollhouse now that I turned in my opinion piece to Fantasy, which makes this day practically Thanksgiving!

I blogged at Tor.com about the Antikythera mechanism, recently replicated by a museum curator and part-time awesome-ist. It reminds me a lot of my first laptop, only this two thousand year old computer works faster than my first laptop, which was only good for predicting orbit as far as I could throw it.

I am leaving on vacation this weekend, and will be at home all week, working on the book edits and the 2k-a-day writing schedule I have to be on for the rest of the year to meet my goals. I was planning to bring the large laptop, but my dad called me last night to make sure I was bringing Fassbender, my Acer Aspire One, home for the holidays. He was as excited about the computer as he was about my visit. (Possibly more excited about the computer than my visit. I mean, I’ve already visited him before; the computer is new!)

I’m debating – I love it for short bursts, but am I going to get Carpal Tunnel banging out 2k a day on its teeny keyboard? On the other other hand, when friends at home ask, “What are you doing these days?” I can just hold it up, since I spend most of my waking hours in front of a computer for something or other, and it’s cute enough to distract them from my boring night life!